1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an information processing apparatus, an image processing method, an information processing method, and a computer program product.
2. Description of the Related Art
An apparatus that efficiently uses software programs (applications) supporting copiers, printers, facsimile machines, and others, and also increases productivity as the entire apparatus has been known. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2005-287042 and 2005-304016 each disclose an apparatus in which common portions of the applications are extracted as a common system service, this common system service and a general-purpose operating system (OS) form a platform, and a copy application, a printer application, a facsimile application, and others are installed on this platform.
In this manner, applications and common services for common use among the applications are separated to reuse service software over a plurality of models, which achieves an increase in efficiency of application development. Furthermore, with service software being repeatedly used over a plurality of models, the internal structure of software becomes sophisticated. Therefore, an increase in quality can be advantageously expected.
However, there is a problem newly occurring with the structure in which applications and common services are separated as explained above.
FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram of a conventional information processing apparatus 100 with a structure in which applications and common services are separated from each other. A plotter control service 110 and a scanner control service 112 shown in FIG. 6 are software programs providing services common to a plurality of applications (a printer application 102, a copy application 104, and a scanner application 106) such as data printing and reading. Each application has to set appropriate parameters for each service when requesting reading or printing. As shown in FIG. 6, the scanner control service 112 has set therein parameters, i.e., read settings, required for reading according to each application, including copy read settings, FAX read settings, and scanner read settings. The same is applied to print settings of the plotter control service 110. The scanner control service 112 and the plotter control service 110 specified by an application derives setting values according to the application for actual processing.
When an appropriate parameter in a certain application is modified, the common services for use by this application, that is, the scanner control service 112 and the plotter control service 110, have to be modified. This is highly likely to affect another application that depends on the common services for use by the certain application. For example, when a parameter associated with printing for the copy application 104 is corrected, the plotter control service 110 has to be corrected. As a result, this is highly likely to affect printing for the printer application 102.
In this manner, with each application and common service having a close dependence on one another, software not originally requiring modification has to be modified. In this state, quality as software is low.
To get around this problem, a configuration may be proposed in which each common service receives specific parameters. FIG. 7 is examples of parameters in this case. The scanner control service 112 has set therein specific parameters, such as read resolution and read range, as read settings in place of parameters set according to each application. The same is applied to print settings of the plotter control service 110.
However, the user does not always specify all such parameters, and it is substantially impossible for the user to ascertain appropriate setting parameters for executing the application.